


The poetry of earth is never dead

by Sheepyblue



Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-04-11 18:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4447640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheepyblue/pseuds/Sheepyblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little fics inspired by Frankenstein</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Frankenstein belongs to Mary Shelley  
> The title comes from Keats' poem 'On the grasshopper and the cricket'  
> I have no other real explanation for this, but I felt like sharing it anyway :)

I remember lying back in some long grass and closing my eyes in the mid-morning sun until I felt a shadow above me and looking up, I found it was Victor.  
'Henry,' he said candidly 'you have grasshoppers in your hair.'


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found some more short things I've written, so this might turn into a collection of little Frankenstein things 
> 
> I do not own Frankenstein, Mary Shelley does

I woke in sleep to find myself again in the corner of the courtyard of a house where I had once holidayed with you and your family several years prior. The three of us, Elizabeth, you and I, had brought down some chairs - for there was no garden - and had spent the afternoon in conversation. When it grew chill, Elizabeth retired, however, we sat late in the same chair, leaning against one another, arms pulling the other closer. We didn't speak, just looked at the moon and the stars, that sinking, sliding feeling of an intimate wrong so pleasant.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was inspired by their journey to England  
> 'He was for ever busy; and the only check to his enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mind'

There is something far more painful than our own suffering, and that is watching the suffering of those we love, but from a distance, through iron bars. Victor is falling apart, flakes peeling off, cracks forming and just in the moment when we should both be growing, climbing, discovering...and yet when I try to pick up his pieces, to fix them, I find they no longer fit and whilst I feel my presence does some good, there are iron shackles and iron bars between he and I. There are secrets, forced closed yet full of infection and I feel unable to help him, without the key that I can neither find nor he offer. I can hardly bear it, to watch from a far as he breaks.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I need to stop writing weird things like this...

It is strange how the rugged Alps are both the jailers and the comforters of their weary prisoners, a haven and a hell. They stand tall, majestic and gloomy, tyrannical kings and queens, rulers with heavy clubs and sharpened swords, drawn to the sight of bleeding, hopeless dreams. They keep the ways of our society stagnant and the dying voices are still heard on the night air, the priest and his mistress, buried alive by the stones cast angrily by the mountains. They say he was a deluded heretic and I wonder if he spoke out against the ways of the world and the jagged rocks of those mountains which debar us from the places we want to see.  
But those selfsame mountains are the steps to an existence more sublime and though the ascent may be sharp and the ravines are but gaping mouths, with this danger, with this omnipotence, there comes a beauty so overpowering it fills your very soul with a rapid joy and I have almost shuddered on stealing a glance at the numinous world from above. Below the water of the lake hurls itself at the side of the mountains, it battles itself when caught in a tempest and the whole of earth appears reflected in that very scene, the wide ocean, the mountains, the different secrets of the world, the scatterings of civilisation and its unexplored and mystic crevices.   
Nature does not age like man, no, the trees may grow old and wise, the rocks become covered in lichen and crack with the cold, but these changing sights do not fill the soul with bitterness but with joy. The flower returns the next year and if not the next, then the year after and who’s soul could not be eleveated by the supremity, the glory and sheer beauty of the world.  
But those same mountains and sights with which I am so enamoured, from which the whole wide world appears at my fingertips, they are also shrouded in anger, with regret and they form the chains that lock one so tightly to the designs we did not choose for ourselves. How can that be, that two feelings merge together, repelling yet embracing each other, bringing both joy and misfortune? What does it mean when we climb a mountain – do we see the world that we can never attain on the grounds of reality or do we sit on the shoulder of a king who is willing to share with us his kingdom?  
There have been occasions when climbing those mountains; I have wanted only to shed my skin, like a beetle, to burst through the layers of old and to step out, perhaps unrecognisable, perhaps in the shape of what I could become. But whilst the mountains fill me with that incomparable joy of possibility, the also keep me in my skin, in the environs of Geneva, chained to the miserable designs of commerce.


	5. Chapter 5

There was something in Victor’s words that persuaded Henry his disorder owed it’s origin to some strange and terrible event, something so unspeakable, he had flailed in its grasp and sunk into its shadowy clutch. Glancing at his friend and finding him again in a restless slumber, Henry went quietly to the door of the laboratory, the door to which Victor looked at frequently in terror. On entering the room, Henry too recoiled in horror, stepping back for a moment then re-entering. Papers detailed with sketches of the human body were scattered across the desk, instruments were strewn and carelessly abandoned, and here and there, the remnants of what may once have been flesh were cast aside. Henry gasped, eyes wide ‘dear God, what have you done now Victor?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More randomness. I don't know if it's just me, but I feel as if Henry knew more than he let on about Victor's experiment. He changed Victor's apartment round meaning he must have gone into the laboratory and whilst I don't think he necessarily knows about the monster, maybe he had an idea about Victor's experiment, but assumed it failed? I don't know.  
> Anyway, Frankenstein belongs to Mary Shelley


	6. Chapter 6

'There are some things,' Henry said, placing his hand over Victor's heart 'that can be broken over and over again yet still be fixed.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one line. Maybe I'll write a full story one day..


	7. Lost Summers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a prose poem kind of thing I wrote a while ago, inspired by Henry. I have other Frankenstein poems if anyone's interested, though I know this is for fanfiction..

The morning smelt like one of those lost summers,  
those bright mornings I remember as a child  
before I understood beauty.   
It tasted like the cool milk I’d sipped on the cusp of a promising day,  
when the stern rebukes of my father could not dim   
the power of the blue sky to lift my spirits.   
Sadness barely grazed my knees as I walked on the dewy grass  
for everything was a masterpiece I'd never examined properly.  
The air was warm and golden,   
and I was the knight or the lost hero and the afternoon was  
set to be filled with imagination and friendships  
that I clasped so dear.  
But we were sitting on the wall of the Garden of Eden,   
looking in and drinking in its beauty, but knowing,  
behind us that a dark fiend lurked,  
yet never minding to turn around to look properly.   
It was when who we were was not quite tangible,   
when the light softened the whirling confusion of growing and forming  
and we could smile and laugh  
and think never mind tomorrow, it's today.   
Yes, for a moment, the morning smelt like a lost summer,   
so quickly fleeting.


	8. Chapter 8

‘I had rather be with you," I said, "in your solitary rambles, than with these Scotch people, whom I do not know: hasten then, my dear friend, to return, that I may again feel myself somewhat at home, which I cannot do in your absence.’  
I held his hands in mine for a moment, a gesture perhaps too intimate for the watchful eyes of those about us. Indeed man’s eyes are made for looking, but when they do gaze too long a man can fall dead upon the floor.   
I embraced Victor before he departed and if he was surprised by act, he did not show it. He looked dreadfully fragile, disappearing into the waves to a distant and lonely island. He did not look back however, for his eyes seem trained to find only misery in the scenes that present themselves to him. I followed his gaze and found in the distance a barren rock of an island, its tall sides remorselessly tortured by the sadistic waves.   
He could not see the variety of seabirds that swooped about it, dipping into the sea then soaring high into clear spring sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first line is from the novel itself

**Author's Note:**

> It's so short, sorry..


End file.
